


Everyone Comes To Moe5

by A_Damned_Scientist



Category: Babylon 5, Casablanca (1942), Farscape
Genre: Crack Crossover, Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 20:37:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5178758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Damned_Scientist/pseuds/A_Damned_Scientist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of all the bars in all the universes, she had to march in to his.....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everyone Comes To Moe5

**Author's Note:**

> Please find below, presented for your entertainment, a brief Farscape/Babylon 5 crossover with a strong homage to a certain famous movie. This fic was inspired by the observation that what B5 seemed to really lack was a Vorlag bar. It is brief because inspiration only struck a few days before the challenge it was originally written for, and I have other things I ought to be doing than writing fanfic 24/7.
> 
> For those of you unfamiliar with Farscape, Moe (and Razor-Toothed Vorlags in general) are not so much canon as.... umm... a sort of fandom 'thing'. Some people, foolhardy people, might call them a fandom in-joke. Not me, of course.
> 
> Setting early season three in B5, some time post PKW in Farscape.
> 
> Warnings: Only for bad writing and bad jokes.
> 
> Disclaimer: I’m not in possession of either of these shows, any movies, nor any letters of transit or recipes for ice cream. Any resemblance to any well-known barkeeps is entirely coincidental and accidental. 
> 
> Thanks: To Vinegardog for a speedy beta read.

It was a good bar. Classy. The best. Moe liked to keep it on the down-low, off the ISN feeds and away from the prying eyes of the camera crews and dubious Earth security missions who periodically infested the station, sticking their noses in to everyone’s business. It was getting a harder and harder trick to pull off. Things had been growing more and more tense on Babylon 5 ever since the Centauri had started declaring war on people, ever since the Nightwatch had started throwing their weight around and rounding up dissenters.   
  
Babylon 5 had seemed to Moe The Razor-Toothed Vorlag like such a good place to set up a bar. For one thing it was far, far away from the still simmering Peacekeeper-Scarran contretemps and for another thing it was far, far away from her: the cool raven-haired Goddess who had broken his heart, leaving him standing in the landing bay on LoMo with a comical look on his face because his insides had been kicked out.  
  
Of course the war with the Centauri and their spider-like allies had cast something of a… well, something of a Shadow over things since Moe had arrived on the station.  
  
Moe didn’t like to get involved in politics. But he had a distinct feeling that politics was about to get involved with him when station security, in the shape of a uniformed biped called Zack Allen, ambled through the door of his bar.  
  
“Hey Moe,” Zack drawled with an easy grin, coming up beside Moe who had been sitting at his favourite perch beside the bar. “You got a minute?”  
  
Moe shrugged non-committally, casually covering up the accounts he’d been working on with his copy of the Vorlag Times newspaper. It was a big paper. Ideal for obscuring all sorts of petty inconveniences.  
  
“You keep your ear close to the ground, got your paw in all the pies…” Zack rambled on. Moe shrugged again, neither confirming nor denying anything about anything. He knew that stuff went on in his bar, stuff that the humans and their allies the Centauri would likely disapprove of, but he kept aloof from it all. Stuff like the underground railroad in refugees, for instance. He made sure he never got involved, and so the Nightwatch left him mostly alone, save casting a watchful eye his way now and then. Zack was a good guy, as security types went, but he did wear that darned Nightwatch armband.   
  
“What’s your business, Zack?” Moe finally asked with a heavy sigh. “Because mine is making money and it’s on hold right now.”   
  
Zack nodded in understanding and leaned in conspiratorially. “A couple of couriers went missing in hyperspace the other day.”   
  
Moe gave a ‘so what?’ shrug and ostentatiously looked at his newspaper.  
  
“Thing is, they were headed here. Babylon 5.” Moe remained fascinated by the latest sports news. Zack took a deep breath as he decided quite how much to reveal in search of answers. “And, well, they weren’t really straight up couriers. Thing is they were more your sort of smugglers. Wanted desperadoes,” Zack confided.   
  
“An honest businessvorlag like myself…”  
  
“Rumour has it they were carrying recipes for ice cream.” Zack shrugged again. “Rumour also has it that you…”  
  
“I heard that stuff had been outlawed?” Moe stated flatly.    
  
“A taste of ice cream can turn anyone. Or at least, so I’ve heard.”    
  
“I wouldn’t know anything…”  
  
“And not just vanilla,” Zack cast his eyes around him, making sure no one was within earshot. “Chocolate cookie dough and triple chocolate, so rumour has it,” Moe whistled.  
  
“The hard stuff, eh?”  
  
Zack nodded. “Lots of people just aching to lay their hands on those recipes.”  
  
“Not me, Mr Allen. I run an honest joint.” Now it was Zack’s turn to shrug.  
  
“Anyways, I told Chief Garibaldi you wouldn’t get mixed up in anything you shouldn’t, but if you do hear anything…”  
  
“You’ll be the first to know,” Moe lied through his extensive teeth.  
  
‘~’  
  
“Ah, Mr Moe!” A familiar voice filled the air as, with outstretched arms and the galaxy’s most insincere smile, Ambassador Londo Mollari strode towards him. “How is my favourite Vorlag doing this fiyan day!?” Moe found himself unable to escape from the unwanted embrace. There wasn’t a bar on Babylon 5 where Londo wasn’t a regular customer. Excepting those from where he had already been banned, of course. This amounted to about half of the possible establishments. It was thus inevitable that Londo would be seen in Moe’s sooner or later, if only in order to find a bar he wasn’t as yet unwelcome at.  
  
“You know, Mr Vorlag,” Londo became slightly more serious. “Some of my associates have told me that a fugitive by the name of John Crichton might be heading for Babylon 5.”  
  
“I'm not interested in politics. The problems of the Universe are not in my department. I'm a saloon keeper,” Moe dismissed the news. He’d heard rumours of Crichton. Who hadn’t? The Master of Wormholes. A dangerous, unpredictable and, mysteriously, several-times-deceased man. “Now, if you don’t mind…?”  
  
“My associates, you see, they are most worried by this news,” Londo pressed on regardless. “This Crichton is a daaaangerous man. These wormholes of his, they could disrupt the whole balance of power…”  
  
“Anything that worries your associates is no concern of mine,” Moe responded with deliberate ambiguity, flicking a non-existent dust-mote off his finely pressed white dress trousers. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. Your business is politics, mine is running a saloon?”   
  
“Just keep an eye open, eh?” Londo concluded, nodding heavily and grinning like a shark as he stood and began to walk away. He was a man who knew when to take his drink and make a strategic withdrawal. He settled in a booth in a quiet part of the bar, but kept his eye on Moe the whole time, until he was settled with his drink.  
  
Moe would have thought no more of the whole business if it hadn’t been for the song.  
  
Their song. The one he’d banned Toots, his faithful pianolaist, from playing.  
  
The song Toots had just started to strike up: “I Believe In A Thing Called Love.”  
  
Moe rolled up his accounts in his newspaper and strode across the bar, over towards the big, white pianola. His fury was barely contained within his immaculate white tux. He was revving up to rip into Toots.  
  
And that was when he spotted her, reclining demurely in a secluded booth nearby, eyes scanning the establishment, elbows casually propped on the seatback so she could easily reach for the big blaster strapped to her thigh.   
  
“Touching you… ooh ooh. Touching me… ee… eee..” she sang quietly and absentmindedly to herself in that delightful, accented alto of hers.  
  
She was a vision of frail femininity, with her big black combat boots, heavy leather pants, tight green zip-fronted shirt and long, heavy hair in a tight braid. Her cold, grey eyes met his and there was a frown of recognition. She averted her eyes and seemed to mutter something beginning with ‘F’ under her breath.  His heart did a backflip. So coy, so beautiful. A Goddess.  
  
To Moe’s love struck, hungry gaze, she’d never looked more gorgeous.    
  
But he had to play it cool. After the way she’d left him, he’d sworn that he never wanted to see her again. And now, of all the bars, in all the Universes, she had to come and walk into his.  
  
Her self-reflection evidently concluded, she turned back towards him.  
  
“Moe?” She asked, acting and sounding as though she had only just noticed him. He nodded. He could hardly claim to be Daffy Duck, after all. “Seat?” She moved her black leather duster aside, making space for him. He nodded again and reluctantly lowered himself down opposite her. He clutched his newspaper tightly like a talisman. A conversation seemed unavoidable.  
  
“I wasn't sure it was you,” Aeryn greeted him. She seemed friendly enough, for her, anyway. “Let's see, the last time we met...”  
  
“Was La Belle Aurore. On LoMo.” Moe supplied.  
  
“How nice, you remembered. But of course, that was the day the Peacekeepers marched into town.”  
  
“Not an easy day to forget.”  
  
“No,” she agreed, crestfallen and it seemed slightly abashed.  
  
“I remember every detail. The Peacekeepers wore black, you wore...”  
  
“Black,” Aeryn helpfully jogged his memory.   
  
“With…  red trim,” Moe nodded. The day was etched in his brain, just as it was etched in infamy. “Why did you come here, Aeryn?”  
  
“I… I didn’t know you... I’m here with my husband, John Crichton.” At least she had the decency to look embarrassed. She truly was becoming more.  
  
“John Crichton? The John Crichton?” Suddenly it was all starting to make sense in Moe’s poor, lovesick mind.   
  
“No, just a John Crichton,” she muttered bitterly to herself. “Didn’t you hear they come in six-packs?”  
  
“But…  but why?” Moe asked, hoping she might say it was for him, knowing in his heart that she would not.  
  
“We’re here with the recipe for ice cream.” Aeryn supplied the last piece of the puzzle. “The humans can no longer be trusted to safeguard it. We’re taking it to Don Vorleone for safe keeping,” she confided sotto voce. “Can we rely on your help?”  
  
She needn’t have asked, of course. His heart insisted that he would have done anything for Aeryn, his head stated flatly that he must do anything to aid the Don.  
  
Moe plastered a fake grin on his toothsome features and nodded. “So, where is this scrawny, tailless husband of yours?”  
  
“Down in the docking bay, with our transport. His image is all over the place, so he’s lying low while I sort everything out for our next move.”  
  
“They suspect you’re here,” Moe told her.  
  
“Who suspects?”  
  
“Everyone,” Moe shrugged. It was pretty much the truth.  
  
“Then we’d best get going, before everyone gets wise,” she replied, trying to affect and almost managing to pull off the sort of accent hard-bitten gumshoes adopted in old black and white movies.  
  
‘~’  
  
Aeryn and Moe sneaked through the station towards John and Aeryn’s pod, as discreet and invisible as only a Razor Toothed Vorlag in a white tux and a Raven Haired Goddess in head to toe black leather could be.   
  
“Moe,” Aeryn turned to face him at the door to the docking bay. She fixed him with a sincere gaze and took his giant paw in her delicate hands. “About LoMo…” She reached up with one hand and touched the side of his cheek. Was he imagining a single tear forming at the corner of her right eye?  
  
“You should go,” Moe began. He couldn’t face the tears. Anything else, but not that. “We both know you belong with John. You're part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that pod leaves Babylon 5 and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.…”  
  
She knotted her brow in a frown of utter incomprehension.  
  
“Absolutely.” She nodded, bright and earnest. He must have imagined the tear. “I was just wondering if you wanted to come, too?” His bubble burst and his insides crumpled into a sad little heap.  
  
“Umm…” Moe floundered. “I can’t. I’ve got a business to run.”  
  
“Fine,” she shrugged. “Look after yourself. See you soon.” And then, after giving him a brief hug which Moe knew he would treasure forever, she jogged off into the huge docking bay. Moe stared after her receding, leather-clad eema for several microts, admiring her graceful movements, the way her long braid danced around behind her the way….  He shook his head. There was little point in dwelling on what could never be.  
  
“Here’s looking at you, kid,” he sadly remarked as she passed out of earshot.  
  
He turned to go only to find two human males moving rapidly towards him. With the number of people who had stared at them as they had made their way through the station, it was no big surprise that someone had finally worked out how and where to apprehend John Crichton. On the plus side, though, the two humans staring at Moe didn’t exactly seem united on how to proceed. They didn’t seem to have arrived together and neither of them looked happy to see the other.   
  
“Is John Crichton on that transport?” Zack Allen demanded, staring at Moe and pointing at the bay, where Aeryn could just be seen as she boarded a small craft.  
  
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Moe shrugged.  
  
“Why are you just standing there?” Morden demanded of Zack in a state of some agitation. “Why don't you stop him?”  
  
“Ask Moe,” Zack drawled, casting his eyes around, looking anywhere but at the gigantic Vorlag and seemingly unconcerned by any wider political imperatives that Morden or his own superiors in Earth Alliance or the Nightwatch might have.  
  
Morden strode towards the bay door, seemingly determined to stop Crichton himself.   
  
“Get away from the door!” Moe raised his voice a few decibels, tightening the roll of his furled copy of The Vorlag Times and moving to stand in Morden’s way.  
  
“I would advise you not to interfere,” Morden sneered up at Moe, supremely confident despite the difference in their statures.  
  
“I was willing to stop Mr Allen and I'm willing to stop you,” Moe stated flatly, offhandedly.  
  
Morden sneered and took another step towards the door.   
  
Moe swung his rolled newspaper, swatting sharply downwards, once, twice in quick succession to either side of Mr Morden. A sickening crunch accompanied each blow, as though a pair of invisible giant spiders had been squished. Moe smiled down at Morden exposing his long rows of impressive teeth.   
  
Mr Morden paled visibly, squealed in a most unmanly manner, turned and fled. Zack looked at Moe, momentarily open mouthed with surprise. Moe looked back and arched a bushy eyebrow. He grinned, showing his impressive array of teeth. Zack took a step back and held out his hands in a pacifying gesture.  
  
“Mr Morden's been shocked,” Zack smirked, his eyes beginning to sparkle as a lopsided grin split his face. “I’ll round up the usual suspects.” He chuckled.  
  
“Zack,” Moe rumbled appreciatively, stepping forwards and putting a well-dressed foreleg around the guard’s shoulder. “I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”  
  
  
The end


End file.
